The subject of this study is the dynamic of transformation in the field of engineering
in Algeria. It is based on theoretical approaches from the sociology of professional groups
and combines quantitative with qualitative methods. Using data gathered with the help of a
questionnaire and in-depth interviews at Sonatrach, Algeria’s largest company, the goal of
my study is to shed light upon the factors that come into play at the individual,
organizational, and societal level in the professional practices of two generations of
engineers. The first generation build the large infrastructure projects of the postindependence
period, whereas the second arrived on the job market at the end of the 1980s,
a period of crisis, and suffered from the downturn in the economic cycle.
Business practices consist in activities at work, other everyday activities,
relationships with others and finally job satisfaction. These were the focal points in my
effort to explain the relation of job satisfaction in the engineers of the study group. I
highlighted the effect of one’s place in the hierarchy and the kinds of duties carried out.
There is satisfaction in working for and belonging to a prestigious company. Younger
engineers also obtain satisfaction from technical know-how. Older engineers, more
influenced by nationalist ideology, emphasized building the country, but also selfrealization
and loyalty to the company.
An engineer’s relation to the job can also change over time with regard to career
development. In a second section, I documented the processes of integration and of
mobility within the company. Professional trajectories are governed by policies and
management procedures that define their modalities, yet they are equally subject to
opportunities and informal practices that play an equally important role in determining the
shape of careers.
Finally, the relation to work is influenced by factors outside the company itself. In
this third part of the study, I analyse the transformations of the educational system and their
impact on the certification of engineers, the economic crisis and its effect in terms of
joblessness and job insecurity, and finally the rise of religious discourse and its
manifestations among engineers. These factors connected to the societal context modify
some representations and affect the attitudes and behaviors both at work and toward work.
My research shows that the relation to work, articulates, in a complex composition,
individual trajectories and collective histories lived in environments in flux. The practice of
a profession is connected to various contexts of socialization that individuals go through.
In the Algerian example, it is at the point of contact between education and technical
training that show little responsiveness to the economic operator’s changing needs that it is
supposed to satisfy, a company that it is bureaucratic in its structure and functioning in
which contravening regulations can become a principle of management, and finally, a
societal context oscillating between modernity and tradition. As for this societal context,
religious movements have reinterpreted as action in society. Engineers who were initially
meant to carry out a development mission and considered as vectors of modernity thereby
see their status diminished and there is a crisis in the profession, which is experienced
differently, from one generation to the next.